Municipal Call Center
Interactive Scripting Best Practices
By
Alan B. Smith, CRM Project Manager Steve Burrell, CRM Project Specialist Bernard Le Gras, CRM Project Specialist April Lerner, CRM Project Specialist CRM Project, City of San Antonio March 2005
TABLE OF CONTENTS
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY ... 3
THE 3-1-1 CALL CENTER... 4
INTERACTIVE SCRIPTS ... 5
INTERACTIVE SCRIPT GUIDELINES ... 8
Executive Summary
In addition to the well known “9-1-1” emergency number, many cities have implemented “3-1-1” to handle non-emergency police calls or city service calls. To increase the quality of citizen interaction and increase the rate of correct problem identification, the City of San Antonio created interactive scripts for its 3-1-1 Call Center agents. Interactive scripts are text that appear on an agent’s computer screen that help guide the conversation so that the right questions are asked and the right data are gathered to correctly identify the citizen’s need and create the correct service request.
However, with the development of interactive scripts, there was a tension between the Call Center, which sought to minimize call times, and the City departments, which wanted more data, requiring longer scripts and leading to longer call times. The solution was to devise and
implement uniform script standards regulating (1) syntax, the order, grammar, and language of the text, (2) structure and flow, the organization and arrangement of the script modules, and (3)
levels, the number of text questions or information (i.e., the “depth” of the script.)
In one example, by enforcing these standards on a script involving the problem of a fallen tree blocking a street, not only was the script readability improved, but it was reduced from seven levels to five, reducing the average call time by 16 seconds, and still providing the City department with the information needed to correct the problem.
The 3-1-1 Call Center
In addition to the well known “9-1-1” emergency number, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and telephone companies have adopted other three-digit “N-1-1” numbers for non-emergency purposes. On October 2, 1996, the Police Department of the City of Baltimore adopted “3-1-1” to handle non-emergency police calls.1 On February 19, 1997 the FCC approved 3-1-1 for nationwide use.2 Since then, many cities have implemented 3-1-1 call centers to field non-emergency police or city service calls, such as potholes or inoperable traffic signals.
In April 2000, the City of San Antonio implemented a 3-1-1 Municipal Call Center to provide 24 x 7 citizen access to City information and services. Since its inception, the Call Center has experienced double-digit growth in the number of calls it receives annually. The Call Center further predicts that call volume will continue to grow at approximately 20% annually through the next two fiscal years. However, despite the double-digit growth in call volume, budget shortfalls have prevented the Call Center from appreciably increasing the staffing level of its customer service representatives (CSR), or agents. This increasing difference between call volume and staffing levels threatened the Call Center’s ability to maintain its desired service levels.
The primary tool for the CSR is a text-based mainframe application integrated with the City’s Animal Care, Code Compliance, Environmental Services, and Public Works tracking systems. In 2003, the City began a comprehensive effort to create interactive scripts that a CSR could use to guide the call correctly and efficiently without unnecessary talk time. The challenge has been to ensure that these scripts enable the agent to gather enough information to create the right service request, but do not unnecessarily extend call times and degrade customer service.
Municipal Call Centers have different challenges from traditional business call centers. Business call centers are an integral component of the customer management lifecycle model that manages customers from acquisition to retirement. Business call centers are typically focused on
customer satisfaction, retention, and profit maximization, and are allowed to provide customers with varying levels of service based upon predefined standards, such as frequency or sales. An example is the frequent flyer program of a typical airline.
Municipal call centers do not function under the same customer (i.e., citizen) lifecycle model and cannot tailor its services based upon the money (i.e., taxes) the citizen provides. Every citizen should receive the same level of service regardless of economic status. Furthermore, unlike private companies, service must be provided even if the citizen wishes to remain anonymous. Municipal call centers are funded by taxes, which may be in decline or subject to politics. Municipal call centers must try to reduce or contain costs without being able to restructure its operations towards revenue generating activities.
1
Mazerolle, Lorraine, et al., “Managing Citizen Calls to the Police: An Assessment of Non-Emergency Call Systems,” Cincinnati, OH, February 14, 2003, pg. iii.
Interactive Scripts
DescriptionInteractive scripts are text that appear on a computer screen to guide agents through citizen interactions by moving through a series of steps. These steps may include questions with predefined answers, open fields for text entry, business transactions, links to web documents, or any other activities.
Example
The City is responsible for investigating and correcting the problem of ponding, or standing, water, which is a breeding ground for mosquitoes. However, depending on the location of the water, this problem could be routed to one of three different organizations. Not getting the right service request with the right information to the right organization is costly to the City. This simple example follows a small branch of a larger script to properly identify and diagnose the standing water problem.
What exactly is the problem? Where is the standing water located? Ponding or standing water Create a service request for Parks
and Recreation
Do you know what caused the drainage problem?
Do you know what caused the drainage problem?
Create a service request for Street
Maintenance
Create a service request for Storm
Water Engineering Park Street/ Sidewalk Private Property
Figure 1 - Ponding Water Script Branch
If the citizen responds that the problem is in a park, the agent creates the necessary service request for the Parks and Recreation department, along with the pertinent details, such as park name and location. If the citizen responds that the problem is in the street or on a sidewalk, the agent will create a service request for the Public Works-Street Maintenance Division including the case of the drainage problem, if known. Lastly, if the citizen responds that the problem is on private property, then the agent creates a request for the Public Works-Storm Water Engineering Division. While this process relies upon the knowledge of the caller, the script flows help to increase the probability of correct problem identification.
Benefits
1. They increase the quality of citizen interactions: • The right questions are asked every time. • The approach to each caller is uniform.
• The information provided to each caller is consistent and correct. 2. The Call Center agent has a shorter learning curve:
• Scripts with clear instructions and predefined responses eliminate the need to memorize dozens of departmental codes and shortens the time to learn departmental processes.
3. They increase the rate of correct problem identification:
• Scripts guide the agent to identify the correct problem quickly and to create the right service request.
Increasing the rate of correct problem identification has an immediate positive financial impact for the City. For example, the Streets Maintenance Division of the Public Works Department reports that roughly 15% of their pothole service requests are misclassified, costing the division roughly $253,000 per year to send out the wrong crews with the wrong materials. Increasing the rate of correct problem identification at the point of service request creation reduces costs and increases citizen satisfaction by:
• Increasing the number of problems solved on first contact.
• Decreasing the number of required follow-up calls due to insufficient information.
The Cost of Quality
While there are clear benefits from using interactive call scripts, these benefits would be negated if the scripts unnecessarily increased call times and decreased customer service levels. In practice, there is a constant tension between the Call Center, which strives to reduce call times and meet its own performance metrics, and the City departments, which want as much data as possible to reduce the amount of rework they must accomplish. The City needed guidelines for script development to ensure that stakeholder needs were properly balanced.
An important financial consideration for the Call Center is cost per call. For the average City department, an important consideration is the internal cost of fulfilling a request for service. A misclassified service request is one where the problem identified and received by the department is not correct to actual problem. For example, misclassified or incorrect service requests lead to:
• Increased time and cost of deploying the wrong personnel and wrong equipment to solve the wrong problem.
• Increased time and cost of updating, reclassifying, and reassigning misclassified service requests.
• The potential cost when service requests that impact liability and public safety (for example, a stop sign down) are not correctly identified, communicated, and addressed quickly.
A useful model for interactive scripts had to focus on eliminating misclassified service requests, thereby focusing on the benefits of getting each service request right the first time on the first call, yet accomplishing this goal in the shortest time possible on the call.
Interactive Script Guidelines
The primary drivers affecting the cost (usually time on call) and quality of interactive script are: 1. Syntax – The order, grammar, and language of the text.
2. Structure and Flow – The organization and arrangement of the script text modules. 3. Levels – The number of text questions or information.
Syntax
While it is difficult to apply quantitative measures for script syntax, there are sufficient qualitative “tips” that should be applied.
1. Involve the end-users (agents) throughout the script development. The agents will be the ones to communicate directly with the citizen and will bear the
consequences of bad scripts. Experience provides them with tried and tested terms, phrases, and statements that work with the citizens they communicate with. Agent involvement generates a greater wealth of ideas during script development, as well as builds buy-in and ownership after implementation.
2. Write in short, crisp, grammatically correct sentences that are easy for the agent
to understand and read. Simple and direct sentences with clear wording have
maximum clarity and impact. Agents will be able to articulate them easily and will not have to take additional call time to restate and explain the question.
3. Drop buzzwords and technical terms in favor of commonly understood
expressions and concepts. For example, even though it would be apparent and
essential information for a Public Works employee, callers typically would not know the difference between a pothole and a base failure in the street. Instead, use
commonly understood references. For example, ask the citizen whether the hole in the street is bigger than the top of a standard washing machine. The answer will tell you whether the problem is a pothole or possibly a base failure.
Structure and Flow
Once the script text has been refined and improved, the order of the text and how the text fits together is important.
1. Include frequently needed information and provide easy links to the rest. The script text should include important information that the agent will need to complete the call quickly. However, too much text will make the script unwieldy and degrade the agent’s performance. Include only information needed on a regular basis (value adding) and provide quick links to web sites or external databases for any other information that may be needed.
2. Simplify the scripts by outlining the call flow and then developing a flow chart
process flow diagram. A visual illustration of the call flow will show potentially unnecessary or complex branches. Use this tool to streamline the call flow and reduce the number of branches where possible. Also, modularize the script into sections to maintain proper organization.
3. Highlight key points through text effects, such as bolding and underlines. Breaking up key portions of the text makes it easier for the agent to find and communicate information. For example, highlight service level agreements (the number of days to complete the request) in bold.
4. Standardize citizen responses through pre-determined answers, such as
pushbuttons, over free text, when possible. Often, there are points in a call script
where citizen feedback is required. For example, a caller reporting a rabid animal needs to provide the location and type of animal. The agent can record this information either in free-form text fields or through standardized responses functions, such as drop-downs and pushbuttons. By using standard response tools, where possible, the agent can record the information faster. Furthermore, the data collected are standard and uniform. Also, by ensuring that the agent cannot progress unless a response is selected, it forces information to be collected preventing gaps in the ability of the departments to provide the service.
Levels
Agent performance is not only affected by the quality and structure of the scripts, but also by the number of questions asked. In studies, our team determined that each script question, on average, translated to approximately eight seconds of call time. Thus, it was important to implement guidelines on the number of questions asked.
Each service requested at the Call Center was measured by the following three factors: 1. Frequency – How often is the information or service requested? (Higher frequency
requests cost more because the City spends more time and resources on them.) 2. Criticality – Does it affect matters of liability or public safety? (Higher criticality
requests usually cost more to complete and the cost of failure is high.) 3. Cost – What does it cost the City to fulfill the request?
These three factors were measured on a scale of “High,” “Medium,” and “Low.” Table 1 below describes the guidelines for each measure.
Factor High Medium Low
Frequency Requested daily Requested less than
once per day; weekly
Requested less than once a week; monthly
Criticality Potential for legal liability for the City or issue of public safety; must be completed in 24 hours or less
General requests, repairs, or non-emergency dispatch; must be completed from 24 hours to 14 days
Information requests, studies, estimates, or additional citizen contact required; can be completed in greater than 14 days
Cost Requires dispatch of
crew and materials; typically involves multiple departments or divisions
Requires dispatch of individual with little or no materials; typically involves single department or division Requires no dispatch; typically performed or completed by a call taker only Table 1 Priority Levels
Based upon the measurements of each factor, requests are assigned a priority of 1, 2, or 3. These priority levels describe the importance to the City of “getting the request right the first time” (creating the right service request with zero defects). If criticality is rated High or if two or more factors are rated High, then the request is assigned Priority 1. If two or more factors are rated Low, then it is assigned Priority 3. All other requests are assigned Priority
2 (see Table 2).
Given the increase in cost and liability to the City, Priority 1 requests justify more script questions and longer call times. Furthermore, Priority 1 requests, by the nature of the service requested, typically reflect greater script complexity and more time on the call to get the required information from the citizen. While it is important and emphasized that the agent should get every citizen request right, not every request has the same impact to the City and its citizens.
Each priority is assigned a “soft” ceiling on the number of questions that may be asked. Higher priority requests are allotted more questions than lower priority requests. Factoring in the time required for all components of the call (such as a greeting) and the desire to reach an average call handle time of 90 seconds, priority 1 requests were allotted six questions,
priority 2 were allotted four questions, and priority 3 were allotted two questions (see Table 2).
It is important to note that these are guidelines and not absolutes. It is possible that a department may not be able to complete a request with the defined limited number of questions. In those cases where a department needs to exceed the guidelines, it is evaluated on a case-by-case basis and an agreement is reached between the requesting department and the Call Center Manager.
Priority Standard Rating
Priority 1 6 Levels/Questions Criticality is High or two or more factors are High Priority 2 4 Levels/Questions No two factors High
Priority 3 2 Levels/Questions Two or more factors are Low Table 2
Example
The City receives requests to clear fallen trees that are blocking streets. This service is requested daily (483 requests in 2003) (Frequency = High). A fallen tree blocking a street is a public safety concern and must be completed within 24 hours (Criticality = High).
Finally, it is a service that is performed by a single department and crew (Cost = Medium). Since two of the factors are rated high (plus criticality is rated high), this request is assigned a priority of 1 for a total of six questions. Initially, the script consisted of seven levels of questions, such as whether the tree was located in a park, whether it was between the curb and the sidewalk, and the nature of the safety hazard. Working together, the impacted department and the Call Center Manager were able to eliminate one of the questions and combine two others. The impact was to reduce the script from seven levels to five, thereby reducing call time by roughly 16 seconds, but still meeting the needs of the receiving department.
Additional Considerations
If the scripts are being developed in an application by a technical team, there are two final points to consider.
1. Use variables where possible. Depending on the functionality of the system, it may be possible to insert variables into the script. These variables serve as placeholders that will populate and display data from a corresponding table. It is cheaper and faster to update a single field in one database table than to update multiple scripts. 2. Modularize script components. Programmers know the value of modularizing
their code. Modularization is the process of breaking programs up into reasonable units. Breaking up scripts into interconnected units has advantages. It allows multiple developers to work on the scripts by dividing up work tasks. It allows for easier maintenance since the developers only have to update one module when a service changes rather than have to update the same information in multiple scripts.
Conclusion
Interactive call scripts that guide Call Center agents through their citizen calls provide an enormous benefit in terms of call quality and accuracy. However, if specific and reasonable controls are not exercised on the quality, length, and construction of the scripts, the desired benefits will be lost due to call quality degradation and excessively long call times. By
employing the guidelines and standards defined in this case study, Call Centers can ensure that they have employed an acceptable balance between cost and quality.
